Philip Dacey

Picking Whitman’s Pocket
 
                  “I had my pocket picked in a jam and
                  hurry, changing cars, in Philadelphia.”
 

I have picked Walt Whitman’s pocket.
Oh, we have all picked his pocket,
put our hands deep into his fibrous dark
and left them there,
no ordinary pickpockets,
left them there so that he could not help but feel them,
though he did not mind,
rather enjoyed the intimacy,
appreciated the compliment
of our thievery.
 
We were not quick about it,
were slow, like lovers,
the extraction a process of years,
a tender thievery,
our fingers sticky indeed,
their tips so sensitive
they were like eyes reading the finest print.
 
And before long, he slipped his own hand
into the pocket where our hands burrowed,
his own wrapping around ours
to hold them there, lest we consider
removing and inserting them elsewhere,
so that he became accomplice in this theft of himself,
encouraging us to take what we found there,
for it is what he always wanted,
that his lovers empty him out,
that he be left with nothing,
the perfect baggage
for the open road.
 
 

 
Philip Dacey’s latest of eleven books are Mosquito Operas: New and Selected Short Poems (Rain Mountain Press, 2010) andVertebrae Rosaries: 50 Sonnets (Red Dragonfly Press, 2009). The winner of three Pushcart Prizes, two NEA grants, and a Fulbright to Yugoslavia, he has written entire collections of poems about Gerard Manley Hopkins, Thomas Eakins, and New York City. With David Jauss, he co-edited Strong Measures: Contemporary American Poetry in Traditional Forms (Harper & Row, 1986). Phillip’s website: www.philipdacey.com




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